Now for a continuation of my experiences in Malawi and to set the tone for this segment I’ll start off by telling you about the 6month old baby that peed on me. Great experience that was, I flat our refused to hold another baby in the villages again. One vital aspect of village life that I have only barely touched on is food, or the extreme lack thereof. Understandably when you live in a village and you rely on the land and nature to eat food is seen more of a necessity than a luxury. People only eat as much as they need to survive and there is no such thing as waste. Our meals consisted mostly of moosh in all varieties. Green moosh, brown moosh, black moosh. The green moosh was casavar leaves, the brown moosh was casavar samp (pap) and the black moosh was mooshed up flies. Moosh was usually served with fish as these were lakeside villages or if you were special enough with chicken. To serve chicken would be a big sacrifice because the family would kill one of their chickens for you. We were bestowed this honour twice on our trip. So as you can imagine I lost a fair amount of weight in the villages. If there were no mangoes I think I would have starved, not to say that there is anything wrong with the food just that I’m not big on pap or eating leaves.
So we spent the first 2 days in Mdyaka village before it was time to move on. We all packed our bags and loaded ourselves up for the journey to the next villages. We were also going to be stopping to visit people on the way. We lost two of our posse, Vafa and Aunty Phebe had to head back to Lilongwe to attend to their own business and so our slightly reduced crew continued on to new adventures. Our first location was to a lady named Agnes’s house as she was holding a training session for new junior youth animators. It was a long walk, sweat would just drip from you and the sun was beaming down on us the whole way. When we arrived we plonked ourselves down and enjoyed the opportunity to rest but it wasn’t long before we were up, the herd of mules loaded up with baggage. I got clever this time though and draped a sarong over my head to protect me from the sun. Now we had no idea where we were going, we were just told that we would be visiting different villages to meet with other Baha’is and see how they were doing. We’re hiking through the bush, enjoying the scenery when all of a sudden we reach a road. Confused we ask our leader Mr Kachingwe how much further it is as we’ve already been walking for almost an hour... “It should take about 2 hours”.... 2 HOURS!!!! Every step we took our backpacks felt heavier, the sun was throwing down everything it had and we were already tired from the previous days travels and the lack of sleep. It was a very painful journey. As we walked along the road we thought our salvation had come. A ute heading towards us slows down, the driver sticks his head out the window, oh the relief I felt, the comfort of sitting down, of removing this backpack, of air conditioning. “Are you going for a nice stroll, where are you going?” our leader responds and then, to our absolute horror he just drives off. Confused we all just watch the ute drive away and with nothing else to do we keep on walking. After a little while we cut back through the bush and pass through a bunch of villages. Walking along these tracks the trees tease us by giving just patches of shade to remind us of the coolness of being sheltered from the sun. Finally dripping with sweat, with aching limbs and cramped up backs we reach or destination and heap ourselves on to the floor. We meet with a few Baha’is and Mr Kachingwe takes some statistics before it’s back on our feet and on the road again.
We walk out and end up back on the road, there’s a small shop there and finding that they have cold soft drinks we race to buy some much needed relief. If only a Coca Cola camera crew were there because we would have made the best advertisement. All of us a bottle of coke in hand standing around and gulping the sweet sugary goodness down. Wow it was the best coke I’ve ever had in my life. At last relief, we didn’t have to walk anymore or at least for the next leg. We waited for a bus and then headed off to the next village. This village was called Ndawabiya and the chief of the village is a Baha’i and he graciously opened his home to our travelling party. There was a huge crowd of kids who would follow us everywhere and so I took them all and taught them different songs like “head, shoulders, knees and toes” so cute they would say tons instead of toes. I also took the Wiggles to the village and sang as many of their songs as I could remember as well as doing the Hokey Pokey and a range of other songs. My name in this village is Malita so I would hear that being called out from every side, I guess it was better than Azungu. We went for our traditional swim in the lake and ate a bucket load of mangoes. The chief had a chicken killed for us which covered dinner and then came the part of village life I love the most, sleep. No I didn’t get any. 4 girls on the floor, no mattress, no pillow, stuffy heat and snorelax just a few metres away and to make it even better Sandra decided to respond to snorelax’s calls and started snoring too.
The next day consisted of visiting the Baha’is of this village and taking statistics which took most of the day. It was nice to visit people and hear their stories. Then we loaded up again and started the trek to Bandawe which is Mr Kachingwe’s village. We put our bags down and then headed off for the lake. We walked through the bush for about 30minutes and then down the oldest tar road which we made sufficient fun of before getting to Chintheche Inn. This was a resort which meant chips and soft drink and normal toilets. I had 3 mosquito bites under my foot and so where there were lots of small rocks in the lake I would rub my foot against them, OMG it felt so good.
Back at Mr Kachingwe’s village we saw fireflies, anything I want to write about seeing them is going to sound so lame but here goes.. they were magical. The best part of this place was that I had a real bed to sleep on, with a mattress and a mosquito net. Unfortunately my body went into crazy mode and I just had all this energy so at like 11pm when everyone else was asleep I went and sat outside and I’m actually grateful for it. Although there were no lights on anywhere it was so bright outside. The moonlight was so strong that I could sit and write in my journal. This is what I wrote in that solitary moment.
The moonlight is so strong, although there are no other lights you can see all around you. The only sounds around me are the ones you would typically assume of any rural environment; crickets chirping and distant footsteps. Off in the distance I hear the sound of drums and women singing. It’s peaceful, the kind of peace that touches your soul, the kind of peace that lifts you and fulfils you and reminds you to love and teaches you that your own happiness is here.
I like it here, I like the peace. It makes my soul happy. It makes me question all the things that I make important in my life, what do they really mean? What are they really worth? Am I the person my soul wants me to be or am I a construction of false understandings? Have I become what I am not? My true self buried under comfort and want.
While I was sitting outside enjoying the nothingness of that moment a young boy came and sat next to me. We tried to talk but his English was minimal. What we managed to get through to each other were the basics like name, age, what grade he’s in at school and at one point he said the stars were covered by the clouds. The rest was silence. It was one of the best conversations I had there.
And with that evening ended our time in the villages. The next morning we carried all our stuff to the road and waited for a bus to take us back to Lilongwe. The rains came that day and they didn’t stop for days.
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